Notices

Hi, folks,

I'm using OS2008 Diablo (w/ latest Seamless upgrade) on an N800, that I'm booting from an MMC; and FBReader 0.8.17. I also have the FBReader Maemo option, "Action on key release," set. FBReader is a great way to read e-books, and the N800 screen is just incredible for that purpose too.

But I'm having the strangest problems with FBReader, and have had them for several versions of the program, and mostly just ignored them. The problem is this: the program works perfectly up to about the halfway point of a book.

After the halfway point, occasionally--at unpredictable times--while reading a book with FBReader, the display / interface will lock up on the current page. The page looks fine, in other words, but you can press keys and so forth and the reader will not respond, and you can't switch to the Maemo home screen, or to other apps, etc. After about 5-6 seconds, the display goes black (with some white marks appearing in the middle of it, then completely black) and the N800 reboots.

I've searched the bugs for FBReader and failed to find them, and I've searched the threads in ITT and found no reports of this behavior. Anyone else experiencing this? Anyone have ideas for how to fix it / work around it? (My current, insufficient workaround is to read the book, after I hit the halfway point, in MobiPocket in GVM.)

-Jon

Hi there,

I can confirm this bug, happens to me too. Only difference: I'm not booting from MMC but internal flash on N800. So far no idea what this could be...

Glasswalker

One other question: do you have virtual memory turned on?

And, does anyone else have this problem? To me it seems like a serious bug.

Cheers,
Jon

Hi,

I've got virt. memory enabled on max amount.

Glasswalker

What an incredible coincidence; this happened to me yesterday for the first time ever, (lockup, then no response for @ 10 sec, then reboot). Hasn't happened since though.

Edit: While using FBReader and virtual memory is at max. I've been using FBReader for months and have had no problems at all until that recent event.



Joe

I too have virtual memory turned on--not sure why I suspect that has anything to do with it, but it seems to me that these issues started when I figured out how to turn on virtual memory.

In any case, I've filed a bug report on the FBreader project (not the Maemo project page, but the official FBreader page) as it seems like enough folks have experienced this for it to be considered an important bug!

Thanks for the replies, and in the interim if anyone figures out how to fix or even just work around this, I'd love to know!

-Jon

I don't think I've seen this while using FBreader, but it does happen now and then when I'm using PDF Reader. Always when scrolling down to the next page.

I'm also booting off an MMC and it seems sudden hard resets have become more frequent over the last month or two.

The glitch could be something to do with the formatting of the specific books you are reading.
I recall an update to fbreader making most of my books unreadable, but obviously others didn't have the problem because they didn't read the same kinds of books as me.
http://www.fbreader.org/mantis/view.php?id=74

(this was solved, the developer rolled back his updates that he was trying)


You should try to confirm if it is reproducable or if it is indeed random - it could be when the word wrapping hits a certain point only done by page by page movenet and not by simply using the scrollbar.

The UI also locks up occasionally then fires forward multiple pages once it breaks out of whatever loop it was in.

if its possible you could post the book text (assuming copyright allows) and see if others can reproduce the problem.

Thanks so much for this reply, lcuk. (By the way, I think liqbase is fabulous and have been using it for reading plaintext files!)

The strange thing with FBReader and the files it crashes on: the crashes happen with at least Mobipocket, RTF, and plaintext formatted files.

They happen with both very short files (a set of RTF files, student texts that I was grading and that I thus can't post) and long files (eBook files, both plaintext and Mobipocket).

They're fairly pervasive: they've happened, for me, with the majority of files of any length that I've read in fbreader, and with _all_ long Mobipocket and plaintext files. (They may happen for long fbreader-native or RTF files too, but I haven't tested this).

Finally, they happen at seemingly random points in the text -- i.e. it may crash at one point in a text once, and be fine the next time. The crashes always appear when I'm trying to scroll, which jives nicely with your theory, but as I say, they are not (in my experience) reproducible at particular points in the text. The "odds" of one appearing seems to go up as you read further in a long text, but this is hardly useful information for a debugger.

However, given the above apparent randomness, I'm not sure what text to point someone to, in order to test it -- since I can't reproduce crashes reliably at any particular point in a text. I have filed a bug report on fbreader's project page, though.

I have wondered whether others (besides the folks that have posted here, thanks!) have this same problem, and whether any of them have N800s (or only N810s). It _might_ I suppose be an N800 bug.

Cheers,
Jon

Using Fbreader in diablo 43-7 from int. mmc on an N810.
NO virtual mem., but
SWAP enabled on an mmc partition.

(Could this make a difference ?)

Anyone else ?
I have read a few books in rtf and text versions
from start to end without this bug showing up.